A quarter of Canadians are food insecure. Addressing this must be a national priority
Across the country, more and more people can’t meet their basic needs. Families are stretching paycheques to the breaking point – juggling rising rents, transportation costs and grocery bills. These pressures aren’t limited to those living in deep poverty. It’s become mainstream: Full-time workers, students, seniors and parents are making difficult trade-offs that strain their health and well-being.
The Grocers’ Code of Conduct will come into force on Jan. 1, 2026. Within the agri-food industry, expectations are high. Among consumers, they are more restrained — and rightly so.
For food processors, the adoption of this code marks a pivotal moment. For years, they have warned of a growing imbalance in their commercial relationships with large grocery chains, whose market power has consolidated to the point of weakening the processing sector and limiting the ability of independent grocers to differentiate themselves. A weakened food processing sector means less innovation, fewer choices, and ultimately, less competition for consumers.
There’s no shortage of beef in southern Alberta, but food banks around Lethbridge are looking for help covering the costs of turning donated cattle into meat they can dish out to clients.
Counties across the province this week endorsed a call for the Alberta government to restart a short-lived pilot program from 2014 that covered the associated costs of butchering, inspecting and packaging thousands of packs of hamburger given to food bank clients.
Canada’s relationship with food is shifting in ways that should concern all of us.
The latest Canadian Food Sentiment Index: Fall 2025, produced by the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University in partnership with Caddle, reveals a population still grappling with affordability pressures, changing habits, and diminishing trust in the food system.
For those searching for savings at the grocery store, many are finding out that there’s no safe place to take cover from sky-high food costs.
“The problem in recent years is all categories (of groceries) are going up in price, all at once,” said Sylvain Charlebois, Agri-Food lab director at Dalhousie University.
One shopper outside a Toronto-area Loblaw Grocery store shared with CTV News that in years past, her weekly grocery bill was around $80, but it now falls between $150 and $200.
Soon the government will feed their cheap foreign workers with Soylent Green!
Cassandra Shedden has sometimes had to rummage around her home, looking for things to hawk, just to pay for baby formula.
The 33-year-old mother of three in Thunder Bay, Ont., describes the price of formula today as “gross.”
According to Statistics Canada, formula prices have climbed nearly 84 per cent since 2017 and about 30 per cent in just the last two years.
I wonder if this has anything to do with it. As I recall this is the only Baby Formula producer in Canada.
A winning formula? China invests in Canadian dairy to help feed its baby boom
Donald Trump called Canada’s supply-managed dairy sector a “disgrace.”
Indeed, Canada’s strict system of production quotas, import restrictions and price and quality controls is a perennial target for free traders.
But guess who likes it? The biggest market Canada is wooing right now: China.
Supply management is a big reason why a Chinese corporation is investing an unprecedented $225 million in eastern Ontario. Feihe International, Inc. wants cows. Goats, too. Lots of them.
We’re now in November, and Canada’s so-called grocery “blackout period” has begun — that stretch when major grocers ask suppliers to hold off on price increases until Feb. 1. On paper, it’s meant to stabilize prices during the holiday season. But in practice, consumers lose, big time.
Canadians are struggling to put food on the table like never before, according to Food Banks Canada’s 2025 Hunger Count.
The report shows 2,165,766 visits to food banks in March, the highest in Canadian history and nearly double the number in 2019.
Food prices have risen 25% over the last four years, and 39% of Canadians now experience food insecurity.
Over the weekend, U.S. President Donald Trump promised Americans cheaper steaks by saying he’s ready to buy beef from Argentina. It was a classic populist flourish — short on economics, long on optics.
But beneath the campaign-style rhetoric lies a deeper story: How global beef politics are shifting, and how Canada could quietly become a price-taker in its own market.
If you needed a wake-up call for the global food-manufacturing complex, these past few months delivered it with a roar.
Dr Pepper Keurig is breaking apart. Kellogg is splitting again. Kraft-Heinz is unravelling. And now Nestle has dropped a bombshell: A plan to cut 16,000 jobs globally — one of the largest layoffs ever seen in the consumer-goods space outside of bankruptcy. In Canada, Nestle refuses to disclose how many jobs will go, despite employing more than 3,500 people across several locations.
No, you haven’t been imagining it: your grocery bill may have gotten more expensive recently, at least according to Loblaw’s September Food Inflation report, which states that food prices have remained above the general rate of inflation due to external pressures.
The report, released on Sept. 30, shows that food inflation in Canada rose 3.5 per cent in August compared to the overall Consumer Price Index (CPI) at 1.9 per cent.
Hamburger helper. Instant ramen. Tuna noodle casserole.
We’re in the midst of a dinner throwback era, but unlike wide-legged jeans and the resurgence of DVDs, this trend has nothing do with nostalgia.
So-called “struggle meals” are trending right now as consumers grapple with the high price of food and seek affordable meal options. It’s a new term for an old solution — struggle meals are inexpensive and simple, often made from cheap items or what might already be in your pantry.
A new report from the charity Food Banks Canada says food insecurity continues to climb, but new government programs could ease financial strain.
The organization’s 2025 “Poverty Report Card” gives Canada a failing grade on food insecurity and unemployment, but a slightly more palatable “C” for legislative progress, making the overall mark a “D”.
When Prime Minister Mark Carney unveiled his government’s first five “nation-building” projects this week, the focus was on scale and ambition. The LNG expansion in Kitimat, a small modular reactor at Darlington, the Contrecoeur container terminal in Montreal, and critical mineral developments in British Columbia and Saskatchewan demonstrate that Ottawa is ready to fast-track major projects that strengthen the country’s competitiveness. Energy, infrastructure, and mining are the building blocks of growth, and Carney is signalling he intends to put them at the centre of his economic strategy.
Do you use platforms like UberEats or DoorDash to order meals at the office or at home? If so, you’re not alone. The growth of these applications has been significant in recent years, though it varies widely across regions and generations.
According to a survey conducted in late August by Dalhousie University’s Agri-Food Analytics Lab, in partnership with Caddle, 27.4% of Canadians now order through these platforms more than once a month. That’s a clear increase from 2020, when only 20% of Canadians did so on a regular basis.
I don’t use any “food delivery” apps. Far too TFW sketchy in my books.
I would not be surprised if Farm Boy’s penchant for hiring Apu and his 37 cousins resulted in this. I bought packaged pepperoni sticks from my local, rotten with mold. I stay away.
Farm Boy near Yonge and Eglinton closed temporarily for failing DineSafe inspection
